Educational Assessment and Inclusive Education by Christian Ydesen & Alison L. Milner & Tali Aderet-German & Ezequiel Gomez Caride & Youjin Ruan

Author:Christian Ydesen & Alison L. Milner & Tali Aderet-German & Ezequiel Gomez Caride & Youjin Ruan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031190049
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

In educational research, however, professional responsibility is considered a key characteristic of teacher professionalism (Englund & Solbrekke, 2015; Furlong et al., 2000; Hoyle & John, 1995). While recent analyses highlight the significance of legislation to outlining the responsibilities of professions to the state and society more generally (see Adams, 2010), historical sociological theories associated this term with morality, ethics, and public service (Goode, 1957; Greenwood, 1957; Parsons, 1939). Similarly, Hult and Edström (2016) have noted how professional responsibility includes an inherent moral obligation “to see and respect the needs of the student and of the collective group” (p. 308). Even so, these associations, and therefore their inclusive dimension, have been challenged by transformations to the governance context of teachers’ work. Indeed, for Ball (2008), neoliberal ideological structural reforms have led to a new social settlement in which “contractual obligation, survival in the marketplace or achievement of targets are the new basis of ‘professional’ responsibility” (p. 67). At the individual level, he considers this part of a broader performative discourse which makes educators work “hard, faster and better” (Ball, 2008, p. 52). Responsibilisation has therefore become a mechanism of compliance through which governments can standardise practice, regulate performance, and sanction and reward, to differentiate “good” and “bad” practices, schools, and systems. For instance, in England, school self-evaluation might be considered a form of self-regulation or self-inspection (Brady, 2016).

To explore this semantic shift, Solbrekke and Englund (2011) have compared the different logics and implications of professional responsibility and professional accountability (see Table 5.1). While not polar, static categories, it could be argued that the latter term represents a distortion of the former as a result of policy mandates, standardised practices, and the measurement, comparison, and publication of school performance data. The extent to which both the assessment and inclusion agendas feed into this distortion is our primary focus in this chapter.Table 5.1The types of logic and implications of professional responsibility and accountability

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.